After finding a locale on the map called Blue Brick, I head there hoping for a little neighborhood of blue brick houses tucked away in the green expanse of Marion county farmland. But the asphalt gives way to dirt, and I find myself going through the open gates of Marion Ceramics: Founded 1885.
Bulldozers are pushing clay into big heaping mounds, and I know I’m in some kind of mine or quarry, so with sheepish reluctance I get out of the car and approach the trailer office. These folks are doing serious work, and here I am digging around for a few words.
The first man I find is Wayne Kirby, the vice-president of marketing, and someone friendly enough to tell me to hold on a minute, that he’ll be right back with something. Sure enough, Mr. Kirby returns holding—of all things—a blue brick. It has the word PEE DEE imprinted on it in big block letters.
“This brick,” he says, “used to be fired here in beehive kilns, which are round kilns, kind of like a dome. And they’d load it up with brick, and they’d just heat it up. But it wouldn’t be even distribution—some places would get hotter than others—so you’d get blue brick, along with regular red.”
The owner of the company comes out, laughs, and says I look like a tourist lost on my way to Myrtle Beach. It’s a fair point. When I try to explain what I’m doing, he tells me that there once was a community here, with a post office right over there.
139 years later, they are still making bricks at this site today—face bricks, thin bricks, pool bricks, brick tiles—but, alas, no more blue bricks. Those are history.
Bulldozers are pushing clay into big heaping mounds, and I know I’m in some kind of mine or quarry, so with sheepish reluctance I get out of the car and approach the trailer office. These folks are doing serious work, and here I am digging around for a few words.
The first man I find is Wayne Kirby, the vice-president of marketing, and someone friendly enough to tell me to hold on a minute, that he’ll be right back with something. Sure enough, Mr. Kirby returns holding—of all things—a blue brick. It has the word PEE DEE imprinted on it in big block letters.
“This brick,” he says, “used to be fired here in beehive kilns, which are round kilns, kind of like a dome. And they’d load it up with brick, and they’d just heat it up. But it wouldn’t be even distribution—some places would get hotter than others—so you’d get blue brick, along with regular red.”
The owner of the company comes out, laughs, and says I look like a tourist lost on my way to Myrtle Beach. It’s a fair point. When I try to explain what I’m doing, he tells me that there once was a community here, with a post office right over there.
139 years later, they are still making bricks at this site today—face bricks, thin bricks, pool bricks, brick tiles—but, alas, no more blue bricks. Those are history.
